Champ III: Going Places

The adventure starts here.

St. Amont’s Marina on the Byng Inlet, Britt, Ontario to Killarney Mountain Lodge, Killarney, Ontario – July 22, 2013

We ate at the Britt Inn last night and it was somewhat disappointing.  The service and quality of the food was not quite up to what we remembered from years past.  It had been probably 6 or 7 years since the last time we were in the Byng Inlet.

We decided with the weather coming we would go to Killarney today but we would go thru Beaverstone Bay into the Collins Inlet.  Mill Lake is near the south end of the Collins Inlet.  Lenore and I have anchored a number of times in Mill Lake. The Collins Inlet is part of the Small Craft Route on the Georgian Bay is very well protected from the winds.

We had been advised not to use the Small Craft Route from the Byng Inlet to the north side of the Bustard Islands because of the lower water.  We charted a course directly from Byng Inlet to the north side of the bustard islands just slightly south of the entrance to Beaverstone Bay.  Beaverstone Bay has some great anchorages and leads to the Collins Inlet.  The actual entrance to the Collins Inlet from Beaverstone Bay is very narrow channel marked by probably 6 sets of buoys in about 600 yards.  The lowest water we saw was about 5.5’ and the bottom is reportedly soft.

Once in the Collins Inlet the walls are all granite that rises up in some places to maybe 100’ and some of the walls appear to be vertical rising right out of the water. The channel in a couple of places is not more that maybe 150’ between there vertical walls.  The Collins Inlet is really a very scenic trip.  We passed a couple of southbound boats just before the Collins inlet but no others while inside.

There was a lot of boat traffic today in both directions. Pete and I had the VHF tunes to channel 72 so we could talk when necessary and there were a lot of boats also using 72.  Interesting to listen to some of the conversations and start to draw some images of the boaters and their skills.

We arrived at the Killarney Mountain Lodge reasonably early in the afternoon.  The Killarney Channel was busy with boat traffic and channel 68 is used by the marinas and it was busy.  We had heard reports that there were not a lot of boats in the Killarney area or the North Channel.  That seems to have changed for the better for the marinas and other businesses.

It took us a little while to get situated in the Killarney Mountain Lodge Marina because they were busy and our dock space was taken by a boat that was being serviced. Fortunately it did not take too long.

Lenore and I had never stayed at the Killarney Mountain Lodge Marina before.  It has always been real busy and it seemed like all the big boats would stay there.  This year there were some big boats but also a lot of smaller cruisers and sailboats.  Candy liked the area because there was a lot of grass and a good number of dogs in the area.

With the predicted weather we will stay here 2 days and then see what the winds are doing.  There are some predicted high wind warnings for the North Channel and Northern Lake Huron.